How to design a “company of strangers”: organization theories and guidelines to live, to survive and to enjoy the new organizational forms.

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Course description

We spend a large part of our life into several different types of organizations. Some organization theorists state that organizational forms are a collective result of single and personal interactions based on social sense making processes, strongly affected by cultural and cognitive diversities. It seems almost impossible, not feasible to design organizational forms because they emerge naturally as a collective set of shared beliefs. It follows that “company of strangers” is a indefinite product strongly ambiguous, a sort of a cloud of experiences, beliefs, cultural values and personal attitudes. This course explains why organizational forms can or must be designed, how to use organizational rationality to structure activities and processes, how to get the most from our competences and skills following some methods and framework, how is possible to deal with individual and collective intentions and goals. Members of “company” are still strangers their individual efforts and aspirations are connected and exploited by a common design process. The art or the action of conceiving of and producing a plan of drawing is presented considering the experiences and practices from international firms and management practices of new organizational forms.